Work Confiscated by Stasi Fetches $8.1M at Auction

NEW YORK—A 16th-century Dutch painting that was seized by the East German secret police and recently returned to its owner after more than 20 years in state custody sold for $8.1 million at Christie's yesterday, reports Bloomberg.

Hercules and Achelous (1590), by Cornelis Van Haarlem, belonged to the Potschien family, who were art dealers in Berlin from about 1925. In 1984, their son, who had inherited the work, befriended a man who turned out to be a Stasi informer, according to Christie's. A year later the son was accused of tax evasion and the six-by-eight-foot painting was confiscated. The East German government dropped criminal proceedings in 1986, but kept the work in lieu of taxes. It was moved to the Bode-Museum in Berlin and eventually to the city's Gemaeldegalerie and back to the Bode before being returned to its owner this year.

The $8.1 million sum, paid by an anonymous European collector, more than quadrupled the work's $2 million high estimate, setting a record for Van Haarlem. The previous record for a Van Haarlem at auction was £298,500 ($586,298), achieved at Sotheby's in London in 1997.